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Live On TV: Republican Senators Supporting Terrorism!

jamie — March 6, 2013, 11:31 pm EST

If you haven't heard yet, there's a good, old fashioned filibuster going on right now. The filibuster is over confirmation of John Brennan to head the CIA. It is being lead by Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) and other Republicans, such as Ted Cruz (R-TX) have now joined in.

The filibuster started almost 12 hours ago and is going in full force.

Now I want to take a page from the Republican playbook of the last decade. We are currently embarked in a global war on terror. At such a time we need someone to lead out main foreign intelligence agency. So why are Republicans trying to prevent that intelligence and aide terrorists?

Now do I believe that? No I don't, but it is the exact thing Republicans accused Democrats of over and over again during the Bush years.

But let's look into the reason for this filibuster. It boils down to 2 paragraphs from a response Attorney General Eric Holder gave to Rand Paul on the drone program:

“The question you have posed is therefore entirely hypothetical, unlikely to occur, and one we hope no president will ever have to confront. It is possible, I suppose, to imagine an extraordinary circumstance in which it would be necessary and appropriate under the Constitution and applicable laws of the United States for the President to authorize the military to use lethal force within the territory of the United States.”

“For example, the president could conceivably have no choice but to authorize the military to use such force if necessary to protect the homeland in the circumstances like a catastrophic attack like the ones suffered on December 7, 1941, and September 11, 2001,” Holder continued.

Since this became public yesterday the right has been up in arms, claiming that Obama is saying he can kill any citizen at anytime using a drone. Rand Paul even said today that "No President has the right to say that he is judge, jury and executioner."

Really? Well how about a vice-President?

On September 11, 2001, a very non-hypothetical situation like this did exist. We all know that date. What everyone might not know is that Dick Cheney actually ordered the military to shoot down Flight 93:

Newly published audio this week reveals that Vice President Dick Cheney’s infamous Sept. 11, 2001 order to shoot down rogue civilian aircraft was ignored by military officials, who instead ordered pilots to only identify suspect aircraft.

That revelation is one of many in newly released audio recordings compiled by investigators for the 9/11 Commission, published this week by The Rutgers Law Review. Featuring voices from employees at the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and American Airlines, the newly released multimedia provides a glimpse at the chaos that emerged as the attack progressed.

Dick Cheney ordered the execution of 40 citizens on that day and none of these people were involved in a crime, only the 4 hijackers. Sadly, we know how the story ends, but still, Dick Cheney acted as judge, jury and executioner and he wasn't even President.

So where was Rand Paul, Ted Cruz and all the other Republicans at during this? I sure as hell didn't hear any complaints. As matter of fact, I remember hearing support. That support transformed into support for other actions, such as torture and indefinite detention. To justify this the right quickly went to the television show 24, which became a policy manual for the Bush administration, instead of a fictional show.

I can't even begin to explain how much it infuriates me to hear Republicans today whine and complains about our "rights". During the Bush years they didn't give a damn about our rights. They even famously claimed that no one had rights when they were dead. So why the change? It must be because there is a Democrat in the White House.

So listen to Rand Paul today, but remember that he and his party are the most hypocritical politicians to walk this planet. All Eric Holder did was use a hypothetical situation to answer the question. The right has twisted it and complained about it, when it was their own party that used a very real situation to justify such action.